Habermas and the Public
Sphere
About this title:
In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines
respond to Habermas's most directly relevant work, The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
Understanding
Sociology
by Craig Calhoun, Donald Light and Suzanne Keller
About this title:
The authors have tried to make this a book students will
want to read as well as a book from which they will learn
about the best of contemporary and classical sociology....
The concepts of functional integration, power, social
action, social structure, and culture are presented as major
tools of sociological work.--Pref.
Classical
Sociological Theory
By Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, and James Moody (editors)
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Critical Social Theory
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Contemporary
Sociological Theory
By Craig Calhoun, Joseph Gerteis, and James Moody
(editors)
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Understanding
September 11
by Craig Calhoun, Ashley Timmer and Paul Price (editors)
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About this title:
When terrorists flew jets into the World Trade Center and
the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the social effects were
as dramatic as the visual images. Individual lives,
families, friendship networks, corporations, global
financial flows, and politics were all transformed. Moving
behind headlines, first impressions, political speeches, and
soundbites, knowledge from the social sciences is a basic
resource for understanding these changes—and also what has
not changed. The social sciences fill in necessary
background, provide contexts for interpretation, and offer
vital analytic perspectives. They help us see deep roots to
some parts of the current crisis and also the influence of
social change. They show how religious and cultural factors
intertwine with economic and security concerns. They help us
make sense of the role of Islam, the impact on international
relations, and the challenges for democratic societies.
Understanding September 11 is written by many of today's
foremost anthropologists, economists, historians, political
scientists, and sociologists; by specialists on Islam, war,
terrorism, and Central Asia. It offers the most complete
account available, not just of terror and tragedy but of the
challenges we face now and the issues we must understand to
make informed choices about our future.
Bourdieu: Critical
Perspectives
By Craig Calhoun, Moishe Postone, and Edward Lipuma
(editors)
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About this title:
Long a dominant figure in the French human sciences, Pierre
Bourdieu has become internationally influential in the
fields of sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies. A
major figure in the development of "practice" as an
organizing concept in social research, Bourdieu has emerged
as the foremost advocate of reflexive social science; his
work combines an astonishing range of empirical work with
highly sophisticated theory. American reception of his
works, however, has lacked a full understanding of their
place within the broad context of French human science. His
individual works separated by distinct boundaries between
social science fields in American academia, Bourdieu's
cohesive thought has come to this country in fragments. "Bourdieu:
Critical Perspectives" provides a unified and balanced
appraisal of Bourdieu's varied works by both proponents and
skeptics. The essays are written from the varied viewpoints
of cultural anthropology, ethnomethodology and other
varieties of sociology, existential and Wittgensteinian
philosophies, linguistics, media studies, and feminism. They
work around three main themes: Bourdieu's effort to
transcend gaps between practical knowledge and universal
structures, his central concept of "reflexivity, " and the
relations between social structure, systems of
classification, and language. Ultimately, the contributors
raise a variety of crucial theoretical questions and address
problems that are important not only to understanding
Bourdieu but to advancing empirical work of the kind he has
pioneered. In an essay written especially for this volume,
Bourdieu describes his own "mode of intellectual production"
and the reasons he sees for its common misunderstanding. The
contributors are Hubert Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow, Charles
Taylor, Aaron Cicourel, James Collins, William Hanks, Beate
Krais, Nicholas Garnham, Scott Lash, Roger Brubaker, and
Loic Wacquant, and the editors.
Nationalism
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About this title:
Nationalism is one of the most pressing of global problems.
Drawing on examples from around the world, Craig Calhoun
considers nationalism's diverse manifestations, its history,
and its relationship to imperialism and colonialism. He also
challenges attempts to "debunk" nationalism that fail to
grasp why it still has such power and centrality in modern
life.
Social Theory and the
Politics of Identity
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About this title:
The new social movements of the post-war era have brought to
prominence the idea that identity can be a crucial focus for
political struggle. The civil rights movement, anti-colonial
movements in the Third World, the women's movement, the gay
movement - all have sought the affirmation of excluded
identities as publicly good and politically salient. The
rise of identity politics is also linked to an increasing
recognition that social theory itself must be a discourse
with many voices. An increasingly transnational sphere of
public and academic discourse - and increasing roles for
women, gay men and lesbians, people of color, and various
previously excluded groups - impels all social theorists not
only to make sense of differences in the "world-out-there,"
but to make sense of differences within the discourse of
theory. This collective volume is the product of that
conviction.
Neither Gods Nor
Emperors: Students Struggle for Democracy
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About this title:
Sociologist Craig Calhoun who witnessed the monumental event
of which he writes offers a vivid, carefully crafted
analysis of the Chinese student uprising in Beijing's
Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989. Calhoun takes an
inside look at the student movement, its complex leadership,
its eventual suppression, and its continuing legacy.
Dictionary of the
Social Sciences
by Craig Calhoun (editor)
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About this title: Featuring 1,500 concise definitions
of key terms, this authoritative, single-volume dictionary
of the social sciences covers the vocabularies of
anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, human
geography, cultural studies, and Marxism in an integrated,
easy-to-use, A-to-Z reference tool.
Hannah Arendt and the
Meaning of Politics
by Craig Calhoun, John McGowan (editors)
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About this title: Is politics really nothing more
than power relations, competing interests and claims for
recognition, conflicting assertions of "simple" truths? No
thinker has argued more passionately against this narrow
view than Hannah Arendt, and no one has more to say to those
who bring questions of meaning, identity, value, and
transcendence to our impoverished public life. This volume
brings leading figures in philosophy, political theory,
intellectual history, and literary theory into a dialogue
about Arendt's work and its significance for today's
fractious identity politics, public ethics, and civic life.
For each essay -- on the fate of politics in a postmodern,
post-Marxist era; on the connection of nonfoundationalist
ethics and epistemology to democracy; on the conditions
conducive to a vital public sphere; on the recalcitrant
problems of violence and evil -- the volume includes
extended responses, and a concluding essay by Martin Jay
responding to all the others. Ranging from feminism to
aesthetics to the discourse of democracy, the essays explore
how an encounter with Arendt reconfigures, disrupts, and
revitalizes what passes for public debate in our day.
Together they forcefully demonstrate the power of Arendt's
work as a splendid provocation and a living resource.